UnionBank using AI-based tool for customer feedback

UNIONBANK of the Philippines, Inc. is now using a tool that leverages data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer experience and product creation.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) Free-text Analysis Tool can automate the identification of user needs and gains through direct feedback analysis, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday.

“At UnionBank, we take delivering the best customer experience very seriously. To ensure our products, services and interactions across channels keep on delighting our customers, we make sure we continuously get feedback from them and we work closely with our Data Science and AI counterparts to help us analyze the vast data we get to allow us to keep on providing what our customers love and quickly address those that need improvement,” UnionBank Chief Marketing Officer Albert C. Cuadrante was quoted as saying.

The bank said after using the tool for eight months, it was able to streamline the analysis of more than 10,000 monthly survey responses and over 35,000 inquiries and complaints from customers.

“The information that we are able to get from our various feedback channels, whether through online surveys, comments on social media and actual interviews, allow us to have more personalized offers and engagements with our different customers, ultimately deepening their relationship with us,” Mr. Cuadrante said.

“The tool, which leverages NLP (Natural Language Processing), customer data analytics, and clustering techniques, identifies the top issues raised by multiple customer segments in just three to five minutes, saving around one to two weeks and significant man-hours of manually screening and processing texts,” UnionBank AI and Innovation Center of Excellence Data Scientist Gabriel Isaac L. Ramolete said.

The bank said customers can rate the bank using NPS with a satisfaction score ranging from 0 as the lowest to 10 as the highest and give feedback to expound on their ratings.

The software takes data from free text found in different platforms such as the UnionBank Online mobile app or surveys answered in branches, the bank said.

It said the tool also has an automated dashboard featuring sentiment analysis for reported customer experiences and product performance summaries, which is then used by its customer experience staff to analyze root causes and provide proactive recommendations that can help customers.

“It is challenging for humans to read thousands of feedback texts to understand its impact on customer experience. Technologies like NLP function best at manually extracting insights from big and unstructured data. The tool that we developed and deployed at UnionBank acts as a decision support system that helps with prioritizing and making more informed decisions,” UnionBank AI and Innovation Center of Excellence Head Adrienne G. Heinrich said.

“Because of this, we were able to raise the bank’s NPS above its local competitors, and more importantly, leave more human-critical tasks to the bank’s employees, so they can ideate, communicate, and execute actions optimally,” she added. — A.M.C. Sy